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Dessert

Wafer Kisses

A sweet wafer treat made from flour, sugar, butter, milk, eggs, and nutmeg, baked in wafer irons.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Wafer Kisses

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Beat the yolks and whites of the eggs separately until stiff.

  2. Rub the sugar and melted butter together until creamy.

  3. Work in the egg yolks, then add the milk, followed by the flour and egg whites.

Bake and shape

  1. Bake in well-buttered wafer irons quickly, browning as little as possible.

  2. Roll the wafers while hot onto a smooth, round stick, carefully slipping it out once they take shape.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Whipped whites and yolks add lightness and structure, helping the wafers rise and set thin and crisp.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the wafers together once baked and shaped.
Sugar
Sweetens the wafers and helps them brown and crisp as they bake.
Melted butter
Adds fat for richness and tenderness, and helps prevent the wafers from sticking to the irons.
Sweet milk
Adds moisture so the batter pours smoothly and bakes into a tender wafer.

The step that matters

Baking the wafers quickly. Wafers must bake fast in hot, well-buttered irons, browning as little as possible. Over-browning makes them bitter and brittle, and they must be rolled while still hot, before they set and crack.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, sugar, butter, milk, egg):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Jalapenofits less well
  4. Capersfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, butter, milk, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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